sweetest disposition, and Wallis was no saint. Revenge was the
order of the day as she set out on what would be an almost life-
long mission to butcher the woman whom she believed had
robbed her of her rightful role as Queen of England.
It was a battle waged in the drafty corridors of palaces and
castles of England, and eventually across oceans, between two
extraordinary characters. Between them, they changed not just
the course of British history, but maybe that of the world as well.
They met on fewer than a handful of occasions, and each time
the atmosphere crackled with tension. Observers cringed, wait-
ing for the sparks to fly, but these women were old campaign-
ers in the society stakes; each knew how the game was played.
Overt displays of rancor were frowned upon. This was feuding
at the first remove, filtered through stiff upper lips, cut-glass
accents, and preternatural amounts of self-restraint.
For some the confrontation amounted to raw xenophobia
the snooty British aristocracy looking down its nose at the vul-
gar American upstart but this is a gross oversimplification.
Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, a steady stream of Amer-
ican heiresses had married successfully into British nobility;
Winston Churchill s own mother, herself the daughter of a Wall
Street speculator, is a case in point. No, the antipathy toward
Wallis went far deeper than mere nationality. She was a woman
with a past, and in those more prudish times a past, once
acquired, was damnably difficult to shake off.
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Duchess of Windsor versus Queen Mother 131
Appropriately enough for this most enigmatic of women, even
her date of birth is shrouded in mystery. Most plump for June
19, 1896, though even Wallis herself was unsure. What we do
know is that her father, T. Wallis Warfield, belonged to the
unfashionable side of a wealthy Pennsylvania family, earned a pit-
tance as a clerk, and died within six months of his daughter s
birth. She was christened Bessie Wallis, Bessie after her mother s
sister, Wallis after her father. Right from an early age she hated
her name and called herself Wallis. While still young she went to
live with relatives in Baltimore.
Even as a teenager she triggered criticism. Many thought her
fast, far too racy for the straitlaced Baltimore bluebloods.
Although too angular and rawboned to be considered a classical
beauty, she exuded a rare sexuality that inflamed hearts and loins
alike, and she never could resist a handsome man in uniform.
On November 8, 1916, she married a naval pilot named Earl
Winfield Spencer Jr. It was a romantic age and Spencer had dash
and élan to spare; he also had problems with the bottle. Within
days of the wedding Wallis realized her mistake: she had mar-
ried a drunk, someone eaten up with jealousy, often violent.
Despite this, she stayed with him and at the end of World War
I, when Spencer was given command of the North Island air sta-
tion near San Diego, Wallis went too.
Slowly the marriage withered. Despite this, Wallis was still play-
ing the dutiful wife when, on April 7, 1920, the British cruiser HMS
Renown put into San Diego. On board was the man widely
regarded as the world s most eligible bachelor, the Prince of Wales.
Golden-haired and youthfully handsome, the playboy heir to the
British throne basked in the kind of adulation usually reserved for
the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino. As an unof-
ficial ambassador for Britain, and more important for himself, he
circled the globe, raising pulse rates and breaking hearts wherever
he traveled, a regular Prince Charming.
Among those present at the official reception that evening were
Lieutenant Commander Spencer and his wife, Wallis. Like dozens
of others they had to content themselves with just a brief glimpse
of the twenty-five-year-old prince before he disappeared, press-
ing the flesh and smiling nonstop, into the adoring throng.
While the prince resumed his world travels, Wallis took stock
of her life. Marriage held fewer attractions than ever, and in
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132 GREAT FEUDS IN HISTORY
1924, after a string of unsuccessful affairs, she took off for
China, still nursing fond memories of the prince. She wasn t
alone in her admiration. Across the Atlantic an elfin young aris-
tocrat named Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was also rumored, if you
believed the newspapers, to have fallen under the prince s hyp-
notic spell. In childhood this daughter of a Scottish earl had
played often with the prince, but age only accentuated the dif-
ferences between them. Whereas the prince was willfully self-
indulgent, Elizabeth s sense of rectitude and duty came firmly
out of the Victorian mold, and she had absolutely no intention
of marrying any time-wasters.
Despite a lather of newspaper speculation linking her to the
prodigal prince, the eminently sensible Elizabeth shrewdly
looked elsewhere, and in 1923 it was announced that she had
become engaged to Albert, Duke of York, the prince s younger
brother. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]